That is not the situation in
Broncosaurus Rex written by Joseph Goodman.
The Confederacy in Broncosaurus Rex are written as the underdog true American good guys fighting the corrupt Union who have betrayed their founding American ideals.
Page 9:
Ok
The Confederacy
"The Confederate States of America fights for America as an ideal of liberty, not a geographic place. Led by dashing heroes (not politicians or bureaucrats), the Confederate member states shun the crass, “everything is for sale” attitude of the commercial and industrial Union. Instead, they prefer an aristocratic, paternalistic, agrarian lifestyle. Individualism and self-rule, liberty and independence, free will and hands-off governments are the marks of rebel lands."
. . .
"Thanks to its great regard for national sovereignty and local government, the Confederacy treated these alien governments respectfully and usually earned their alliance, especially after the domineering, centralized Union made an appearance."
See the confederates fight for an ideal of freedom, and are led by heroes, its not about slavery.
As for the Union page 8 says:
"The Federal Union of Planets has, since its earliest days as the United States of America, retained a clear vision of its role in maintaining peace between cultures. The Union has always considered itself a great melting pot, where people (and later aliens) of all backgrounds can join forces in the name of the greater good. The Union advocates strict representative democracy, human rights, free speech, free trade, prosperity through technology and uninterrupted human expansion. All of this is made possible through the great melting pot, which can theoretically merge disparate cultures into a representative democracy that preserves their heritage while granting them unparalleled rights and opportunities."
"This grand vision has, unfortunately, not been implemented successfully. With the beginning of the space race, the Union’s adherence to its beliefs ran into a series of logistical snags."
"First, the Union’s centralized federal government has grown exponentially since the early twenty-first century. The beginning of the space race and the existence of far-flung planetary governments created the need for additional layers of government. As the Union expanded in space, the bureaucracy grew by leaps and bounds, but its honesty and effectiveness diminished. Many citizens lost their faith in the government’s ability to enforce its ideals."
"Second, colonists living on distant worlds developed priorities that were completely different from the comfortable citizens still living on Earth. The radical differences in lifestyle polarized political opinions, and huge demographic fractures emerged. The further the Union spread, the more difficult it became to keep to the essence of democracy. The former majority (regular citizens) became less and less powerful as the new minority (space travelers and colonists) grew, and this only fueled further resentment."
"Third, many of these and other disenchanted voter blocs chose to join the Confederacy. When the Union cracked down with martial law, this only exacerbated tensions elsewhere in the colonies."
"Finally, the Union’s treatment of newly discovered intelligent aliens was somewhat less than idealistic. Two alien species were completely exterminated by Union industrialists determined to strip-mine their home planets. Others were wiped out by diseases inadvertently transmitted by Union settlers. Most of the rest were “liberated” and forced into the Union democracy, no matter what their culture or traditions dictated. For these subjugated peoples, the great melting pot became a great jail cell."
"Through a combination of these factors and the ongoing civil war, the great Union ideals of the twenty-first century collapsed under the weight of insurmountable logistics. Corruption erupted in epidemic form, the spirit of idealism died and the self-serving ethics of capitalism reigned supreme. This, unfortunately, is the Federal Union of Planets today."
The Union is a corrupt empire for heroes to struggle against.
And as for the no slavery Confederacy well . . .
Page 6
"The Confederate hatcheries are tended by specially trained civilians with a strong affinity for animals. They are guarded by Dino Warriors, the elite trained cavalry who ride dinosaurs. Dinosaurs from the hatcheries are born into domesticity, making them much easier to train than their wild-born counterparts. In the hatcheries lies the hope that every army can be trained and equipped with dinosaur allies. If such a force ever took to space, it might be able to reclaim the Confederacy’s lost glory."
So the Confederates are domesticating dinosaurs and that may give them a power edge.
Which sits a little uncomfortably with having just set up that most dinosaurs are near human intelligence and have their own societies and tribes.
"Some of the dinosaurs are the classic dumb brutes we all know so well. But most are not. Velociraptors have near-human
intelligence and live in organized tribes that loosely connect into larger nations. Tyrannosaurus rex live in widely dispersed family
groups whose members remember genealogies for hundreds of years. Triceratops travel in large herds with rigorous social organization. Almost every species has its own language and the more intelligent ones have dialects specific to each region."
So the heroic Confederacy is domesticating talking sub humans?
But the Confederacy did stop enslaving humans on their own despite not losing the American civil war in Broncosaurus's alt history.
Page 12:
"The history of 2202 is not the history we know. Sherman’s march was repulsed long before he met Atlanta. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated two years after the third battle at Gettysburg, and the Emancipation Proclamation was never written. The slaves were freed by Robert E. Lee, President of the Confederacy in 1881, as a humanitarian move by a war-hardened general. The Confederacy managed to repulse a Union invasion, but could never launch a successful counter-attack. By the mid-twentieth century, the situation was a stagnating cold war, albeit with open combat on a regular basis."
